October 26, 09

School is gearing up and the year is winding down. Everything is slowly sliding into place ( to avoid a Radiohead reference ), and hopes are high for 2010. In as much as I'm using this blog for the semi-public chronicling of my life in OTR and within the biking culture, I intend use it for personal archive purposes as well. IF I stay up to date, this should provide me with a decent body of work to draw from when creative companies want to see what I'm capable of.

Today, I got my first ever question about my blog - from a pseudo internet stalker (interesting side story about this later). She wanted to know why I'd named this "White Kid on a Bike" instead of resurrecting a prior blog that I'd already established and let go by the wayside. Partially I wanted to focus on different topics than any other blogging I'd done. Another part of the decision was that I felt a new blog could give me a better launching ground, something that I could prove instead of something I already had a bad history with. So, in naming the blog I settled upon the nickname I was given during my first few months in OTR.

Men in tall tees standing on street corners would yell, "yo, white kid on a/the bike" trying to sell me something different depending upon which street I was on. Weed on Vine, Heroin on Elm and Crack on Walnut. They all sound like name for something totally dysfunctional, but a lot of OTR is...so what can you do?

A lot of my interactions with these same people that used to yell at me are now deeper in ways since it's been made clear that I live here and am out in the community just as much as anyone else. This is in part thanks to a few select individuals that avoid the rain on my front stoop slinging dubs and the occasional dog food. I know who these people are, and I'm sure the police have to know as well...so I often wonder why nothing happens. If you're selling weed literally hidden in a gaping sidewalk crevice, I don't have a whole lot of sympathy if you get caught. Seems like an inevitability in ways.

Much of what goes on in OTR centers around the trafficking of drugs. I get offered them all the time and have learned the effective ways to say no while still being polite so that people don't think I'm a raging dick, or a cop (the latter being more important on the street). However, most of the people involved in the OTR drug culture don't live in the neighborhood and simply commute. Some from Avondale or Colerain or a variety of any other neighborhoods that aren't OTR or in the Clifton Area, since most college kids have been warned, and largely stay out of OTR.

As much as drugs permeate OTR life through the smell of blunts burning on street corners, there is another pervasive theme in the neighborhood, struggle. A lot of people here don't want to be here - I love it, but I admit the circumstances are much different - and so often you see people at the lowest of lows trying to get food or find a place to defecate. Things in everyday life that so many people don't even think about. And that in many ways has shaped my experiences in OTR more than someone trying to sell me drugs. As long as you stay a healthy distance away from the drug game, chances for survival are much higher. And having a little big of a head on your shoulders doesn't hurt either. Things totally acceptable in Clifton would get ugly in OTR and visa vera. It's funny to me how one single mile can make such a big difference in communities. In some instances it's 1/4 mile up a hill to a totally new world.